I was born in Toronto and now live in Guelph with my daughter and three-year-old grandson. I graduated from the University of Waterloo. My best job was teaching English and social studies at a school in the Dominican Republic, which I did for eight years. My classroom experiences there were the inspiration for a funny book about English grammar called Idioms For Aliens.

I love history. I think of it as the collective memory of the human race. History is much more than the stories of famous people. It is the stories of ordinary people, like most of us, living our lives, and sometimes doing extraordinary things – like surviving disasters. My book SOS: Stories of Survival came from an idea I had that young readers might be entertained and inspired by true stories of other young people who showed courage and resourcefulness when caught up in dramatic and dangerous situations.
Ed Butts